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Help understanding video formats and resolution in Vegas
Hello all,
First off, my apologies if my questions are a bit naive. I’m self taught in terms of video (like many of you I’m sure), but can’t seem to get my head around a few video format issues in Vegas.
In Vegas projects, I know that NTSC digital video sessions are 720 pixels X 480 pixels using non-square pixels.
HDV projects are 1440 X 1080 using square pixels and an aspect ratio of 1.33 making the project 16X9 format.
Now, the questions:
1) If I open a 720X480 NTSC DV project in Vegas and create text, import graphics, HDV footage, DV footage, and render my footage out choosing the UNCOMPRESSED AVI setting, is the resulting footage compressed additionally? I know that the DV and HDV footage are compressed initially when shot. But is my text further compressed? I believe that the answer is no. That the text would be completely sharp and totally uncompressed with a native resolution of 720X480.
2) Broader question: Are Vegas projects best understood as simply pixel dimension specific until rendered? Let’s say I create a project with the dimensions of 4000 X 3000 for a super large screen size if you will. And the text could be huge and super sharp…And NTSC DV video would either be small on the screen or if I stretch it to fill the screen, it would appear fuzzy looking. The HDV footage would look sharper because it’s native pixel dimension are larger. Is this correct? If so, what “format” is this 4000 X 3000 creation? A non standard one?
3) If I shoot in HDV and want to get the best possible quality for a 4:3 output, how would I do this and what setting would I choose? My gut says 1440X960 and either letterbox or scale the video up and lose the sides of the 16X9 HDV image…. is this correct? If I went larger, 2880X1920 the HDV footage would need to scale up, smaller 720X480 , the hdv footage would need to scale down. Us this correct?
I know that I’m not specifying where the final rendered output is to be viewed…. And that perhaps is the most important piece.
My final outputs are 400X300 on the web…. But the concepts above are important to me in understanding how Vegas works 🙂
Thanks so much in advance!
S
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2 Replies
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> First off, my apologies if my questions are a bit naive. I’m self taught in terms of video (like many of you I’m sure), but can’t seem to get my head around a few video format issues in Vegas.
Don’t be ridiculous. This is how we all learned. You ask as many “seemingly” naive questions as you want because there are probably dozens of people reading these posts who are afraid to ask the very same question. Ask away…
> HDV projects are 1440 X 1080 using square pixels and an aspect ratio of 1.33 making the project 16X9 format.
This is not correct so let’s start here. 1920×1080 HD uses square pixels. 1440×1080 uses non-square pixels. Here’s how you tell: If the Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) is 1.0000 the pixels are square. If it’s anything else, the pixels and non-square. So you correctly pointed out that 1440×1080 uses a PAR of 1.3333 which, by definition, is non-square. (1440 x 1.3333 = 1920 x 1.0000)
> 1) If I open a 720X480 NTSC DV project in Vegas and create text, import graphics, HDV footage, DV footage, and render my footage out choosing the UNCOMPRESSED AVI setting, is the resulting footage compressed additionally? I know that the DV and HDV footage are compressed initially when shot. But is my text further compressed? I believe that the answer is no. That the text would be completely sharp and totally uncompressed with a native resolution of 720X480.
Yes, you are correct. The text will not be compressed. Uncompressed means exactly that. No compression algorithm will be used (i.e., no CODEC will be applied).
> 2) Broader question: Are Vegas projects best understood as simply pixel dimension specific until rendered? Let’s say I create a project with the dimensions of 4000 X 3000 for a super large screen size if you will. And the text could be huge and super sharp…And NTSC DV video would either be small on the screen or if I stretch it to fill the screen, it would appear fuzzy looking. The HDV footage would look sharper because it’s native pixel dimension are larger. Is this correct? If so, what “format” is this 4000 X 3000 creation? A non standard one?
Vegas won’t let you make a project that large. The largest allowed is 2K so that’s 2048×2048. All of your generated media like text will have this resolution. DV will be blocky/fuzzy and HDV will be kinda OK. The “format” would be non standard.
> 3) If I shoot in HDV and want to get the best possible quality for a 4:3 output, how would I do this and what setting would I choose? My gut says 1440X960 and either letterbox or scale the video up and lose the sides of the 16X9 HDV image…. is this correct?
If your camera has 4:3 bars I would turn them on. This will ensure that you frame your 16:9 shots so that you keep the action in the 4:3 area. Then when you edit, use a 4:3 project setting and go into Pan/Crop and crop the 16:9 footage to be 4:3. You can use the Match Output Aspect option of Pan/Crop to do this easily and accurately.
> If I went larger, 2880X1920 the HDV footage would need to scale up, smaller 720X480 , the hdv footage would need to scale down. Us this correct?
There is no advantage to going larger than HDV if your final output is SD. That will be plenty of resolution to work with.
> My final outputs are 400X300 on the web…. But the concepts above are important to me in understanding how Vegas works 🙂
If you are outputting for the web, don’t forget to deinterlace the footage because web output should be progressive for the best possible viewing on all devices.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks so much John! I really appreciate the feedback!
All the best,
S
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